
Music as Metaphor
Arguably, music is the medium where sound has is greatest effect on our emotions. Think of John Williams’s iconic score for the 1977 movie Jaws. By channeling the main figure of the shark in the movie, Williams found inspiration in the characteristics of predatory terror, using them as a metaphor for the music he composed. Jon Burlingame, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Mus